And Now the Rains Weep o'er His Hall
by The Fishmonger
Summary: Alas, the plague spread and women and children and babes at the breast were unheeded as the fittest tried to survive. Mankind could not adapt to this and thus many finally lost faith and turned to creedless shells preforming bestial acts as eating their dead. Few foreshadowed that their meals would resurrect and feed upon them instead. Life is not a song, to our sorrow.
1. Chapter 1: Ancient Pharaohs

**Chapter 1: Ancient Pharaohs**

* * *

I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,

I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,

and will let the dead go up to eat the living!

And the dead will outnumber the living!

_—The Epic of Gilgamesh_

* * *

Once, when she was just a girl in the flush of her youth, a young boy gave her a red flower as a token of his love. He was a rare and precious boy, though she had to confess that she had fully forgotten his face and name. Little lingered but the vague memory of the red flower.

Quinn Fabray slept in a parked car beneath a bridge with a blanket piled over her. She woke with the cold morning rain. It gusted over the car, dancing with the death. She watched it fall on the road, on the car, on the ruins.

When morn came and the grey sunlight congealed over the land, Quinn rose, fed and gathered her belongings before leaving the car where she had spent the night behind her, like the bones of an eaten meal. The world felt dead, she only a vestigial entity left of it. The last of Gods crowned masterpiece. Everyone else expelled to tombs, only to leave them to haunt the non-expelled. Nothing moved save the leaves and branches on the wind. Quinn liked it that way—days where humanoids stalked the streets was not days to relish.

In the grey light of the dawn, she was cold, hungry and solitary. Once, a young boy had given her a red rose as a token of his love, but now there was no boy or love left. Only gloom and only death was. Only a feeble hope of whatever possessed the divine power of life. Every day, the future looked a little bit darker. But the past—even the grimy parts of it—kept on getting brighter.

* * *

When the sun stood high, hidden by a vast blanket of grey clouds, Quinn Fabray walked in a wide street of a little town. The rain had caught up again. Surrounding her was dark buildings with shattered windows and tired walls. Some had survived, some had not. The town was a ghost; dusty and dead, draped by dead automobiles on the roads and the pavements. Lifeless shops standing by the street, emptied and without any costumers or employees. Void swallowing all. All of them abandoned by their former owners and conquered by nature.

When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural. Too bad few foreshadowed, too few saw and could act, that it spread faster than a common flu, that civility and civilians became an ignored hurdle when mankind fought the increasing fire. Women and children and babes at the breast unheeded while the strong tried to save themselves.

Quinn held her rifle tight while walking down the road, occasionally squatting and studying the land before her. She watched the buildings, she smelled, she listened; however it was not the living she feared. Much fouler creatures roamed these lands; feasters, remorseless and unfeeling killers. In the plague-infected land of cold and famine, many lost all faith and turned to the bestial acts of eating their dead. Unfortunately, many witnessed that their meal resurrected and fed of them instead. It is not the dead that should fear the living; it is the living that should fear the dead.

All the way along the muddy streets she walked in the shadows of lonesome buildings, slowly disintegrated by nature itself. The buildings were scavenged-trough, emptied, ruined and acting as tombs for dead memories… and humans.

The cadavers of the fuel-spitting automobiles joined the buildings, standing on the roads in their shame. They once tried to strangle the earth, but were to slow—overthrown by worse fears. It had spread like a common flue—Quinn could barely recall—only in a more "macabre" way. Standing in the muddy streets and glancing at the lost world, one could only imagine what story the megalomaniac ghost told. What it once was.

_There's a hole in the world like a great black pit_

_And the vermin of the world inhabit it_

_And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit_

_And it goes by the name of…_

_At the top of the hole sit a privileged few_

_Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo_

_Turning beauty into filth and greed_—_I too_

_Have sailed the world_

_And seen its wonders_

_For the cruelty of men_

_Is as wondrous as Peru_

_But there's no place like…_

_…the scabland_, she thought.

Genesis chapter 1 verse 26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." It really made her think. The walking dead was the definition of evil and terror, but man—God's greatest creation—was indeed the foulest and vilest. God is too fond of a joke. Or was it Satan that created the world when God was sleeping?

_What am I?_ Quinn wondered, standing there with long blond hair gathered in a braid and eyes shimmering like emeralds. _Of Satan or of God?_

She wondered what the world had once been like. She couldn't remember any more so it was just that, wondering. Like camping, she thought. Friends gathered around a glazing fire, conversing, telling stories and singing sweet hymns. Laughing, hoping. The fire was dead though, the fire in her heart would soon follow. Laughter? The laughter froze in man's throats and strangled him to death. There was naught of the camp left. No friends, no memories. All was casted away into oblivion save feeble memories and hopes flying on the wind.

There is no civility, only politics, only the survival of the fittest. It felt like it was only she and those words, that dogma, that ideology. Everything else lost or dead in the power of time. It was so little promise in the country. She should find something to eat soon. The whole world was shrinking down to a core of vital entities. Things to eat, warmth, medication… was God even there?

Dreaming about the campfire and the faces long forgotten, she hummed, hoping that her greatest wish would soon be fulfilled. Humming, she walked:

_"Gotta make a move to a_

_Town that's right for me_

_Town to keep me movin'_

_Keep me groovin' with some energy_

_Well, I talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about, Talk about_

_Talk about movin_

_Gotta move on_

_Gotta move on_

_Gotta move on_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?"_

Quinn could recall what a man had once said to her. The man was forgotten, the time was forgotten, all that was left was she, the idea and this vestigial world of carnage and bad dreams. He had thought that she was naïve and foolish, believing the false tales of lying tongues. He had grinned at her, snorted of her simple and warm-hearted vision of the world before he had told her "Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow."

She had.

_"Gotta make a move to a_

_Town that's right for me_

_Town to keep me movin'_

_Keep me groovin' with some energy_

_Well, I talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about it_

_Talk about, Talk about_

_Talk about movin_

_Gotta move on_

_Gotta move on_

_Gotta move on_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?_

_Why won't you take me to_

_Funkytown?"_

* * *

Her humming was done and Quinn stood by the ade of an infirmary. Or what once had been an infirmary. The land was conquered by nature and by the dead, likewise the time crumbled all things; everything grew old and was forgotten under the power of time. The infirmary was closer to a tomb than an infirmary.

She moved inside, into a huge reception lit by the cracked windows and doors. Furniture lay shattered around, everything out of place as if it had been a war where the only arms were tossing of furniture. The air was damp and thick.

Sitting at the reception desk was a body.

The woman—Quinn could barely see it was a woman—had shot herself. The shotgun, empty, was still clutched in her hand. The corpse was black as leather, the desiccated flesh stretched taut over the bones, and little of her head was left. Most draped the wall behind her, forming the capital words THE END IS NIGH.

She moved in silence up the stairs were she found the second body. It reeked of a repulsive and robust stank, draping the floor in a pool of putrid blood and gore. It was mere bones left in the pool. Passing it she glanced the splashing of blood and vermin and a mass of decomposed brain tissue and frontal lobe and all other things few could ever name. She saw the biting marks on the bones, the leftover flesh not devoured and the marks of tongues that had tried to lick up the blood and gore surrounding the cadaver. What a way to go.

Carefully, not infecting her shoes, she passed the cadaver and entered the hallway of the first floor. It opened to divulge many rooms, all shimmering from their tired, ravaged and shattered windows.

All eyes.

In each room there were many cots. Many cots bore a body—the remains of it—or the signs that it once had. All the bodies were disembowelled and disfigured like a half-eaten buffet. Some were old, some young. Some were women, some men. All helpless when the year of zero came.

She could easily see that _they_ had been here. Everything was out of order, everything cluttered and chaotic. Then not even thinking about the half-eaten buffet.

Then, somewhere off in the distance she could hear the soft voices of mastication and munching. She moved deeper down the hall, sliding between the cots and the rest the mass grave contained.

Two of them sat above a body—just a little girl—and chewed loudly as they ripped the dead and cold flesh of her bones. One of them most have heard her footsteps since he looked up, still chewing, and saw Quinn. The being had once been a man. Still humanoid in shape, its skin was as pale as milk and a tiny stream of blood was running down from its eyes. _Like weeping_, she thought. On the left side of its neck it had a black and festering wound—like the bite of a wolfhound—and blackish and swollen lymph nodes had spread from the wound and covered half the beings face and shoulder. The other half was covered in darkish blood and the tendons of the little girl was hanging down its chin.

It stood up, slow and gurgling and hissing, still chewing the slice of the little girl. Before it could do its move, Quinn stepped forward and drew her knife—long and sharp and shiny—and impaled it between its eyes. The dead die fast that way.

Dropping the dead cadaver (now at least) to the floor, Quinn moved towards the second. Before Quinn's knife did its blow the dead man turned half around, still sucking on the girls arm. Its teeth never left her flesh.

Quinn moved deeper into the different rooms, sliding between the cots, turning the shelves and desks. She scavenged several cans of beans, and just dropped all the pills and pharmaceuticals she found into her knapsack, never caring to read their names. In one room, next to the corpse of an old man, she found a bottle of Jack Daniels Scotch, good year too. Quinn had few pleasures left, but thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treaded out the corn.

Pulling books from the shelves she found the Good Book. The front decorated in black leather with a golden cross cutting the cover, pages crumbling by moisture and pus. She turned the pages and read, "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."

She stopped and dropped the book when she stumbled upon the maternity ward.

The feelings hit her like a fist. Feelings, almost like a vestigial in this world. Her voice and mood fell dead, the tears streaming. _Oh my God_, she thought. _Oh my God_. She couldn't handle it, couldn't let the wounds open again.

She headed quickly down the stairs, running. She didn't stop until she was outside, breathing gulps of fresh air, barely managing to ingest the oxygen. She couldn't stay here no more. Not in this city. This city belonged to the past, not to the present. The dead, not her, not the living.

She walked down the road and saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world; the cold relentless circling of an intestate earth. Borrowed time and a borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

* * *

In the evening she tramped out across a field trying to find a place where her fire wouldn't be seen and where she could rest in peace. The walk was slow on the ground. Night overtook her on a muddy road. She crossed into a field and plodded towards a distant house skylighted stark and cold against the last of the human world. By the time she got there it was dark of night and her bones were aching and shrieking.

The house was empty, bathed in solitude. She found a blanket in a bedroom and slept in the first floor of the house, in a chair facing the door. Monsters move at night, someone had once told her. You got one shot. Yet who are the monsters, and who was she? She felt like she had always felt, simply bewildered, like a woman lost in a dream, in a landscape of meaningless signs; if the world had some meaning for her she didn't understand.

Long in the night she heard a sound. The rain was hard and falling. She had fallen asleep in the chair. She realised as she slept that she heard footsteps on the drive towards the house. In her dream—a nightmare—this sound had become the roar of the fires, burning before her; she had been running through the land, the fires and smoke hissing all around her, and she had lost everything.

Heavy, stumbling, the footsteps landed on the porch. Quinn woke and rose quickly with the Springfield rifle in hand, all senses alert. She racked the slide and realised the safety.

A male stepped through the doorway. He was brown of hair, coated in a green parka and with shinning but tired glasz eyes. A freeze went through the male as he saw the dark figure of Quinn targeting him.

"Keep back," Quinn warned. "Let me see your hands."

The male lifted his arms, slow and weakly. "I'm not armed," he said. A bright ribbon of blood poured down his parka. The wound was on his shoulder.

"Please, help," the male pleaded.

Quinn stepped forward and raised her rifle. "Turn around."

"Jesus," he moaned.

"Turn around," she said, harshly.

But the male took two steps forward and sank to his knees and tipped his face forward. "Please—" He stopped. "Wait a second. Don't I know you, mademoiselle?"

"I'm sorry," Quinn said.

"Please, wait!" He opened his eyes wide; held out his hands. "No. No, don't!"

"I'm sorry," she repeated, and then she squeezed the trigger.

* * *

Quinn stood in the dark of the night, sweltering. Bloodstain on her chest like a map of violent new continents. She felt cleansed. She felt a dark planet turn under her feet as she knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. She looked at the sky through smoke heavy with human sins and God was not there. The faith dwindling away. The cold, suffocating dark went on forever and she was alone.

Live our lives, lacking anything better to do, Quinn thought. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what souls imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what they choose to impose. The rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. "It's us," she whispered, "only us."

Long ago, growing up in a place long forgotten—long dead and gone—Quinn had decided that there was no good or evil, only different ways of thinking. Now however—after the plague and the rise of the dead and the failures of mankind—she believed in evil once again. And among the herd of evil was she.

She began to sing:

_"What have I done?_

_Sweet Jesus, what have I done?_

_Become a butcher in the night_

_Become a dog on the run_

_And have I fallen so far_

_And is the hour so late_

_That nothing remains but the cry of my hate,_

_The cries in the dark that nobody hears_

_Here where I stand at the turning of the years?_

_If there's another way to go_

_I missed it many long months ago_

_My life was a war that could never be won_

_It gave me a number and murdered Fabray_

_When it chained me and left me for dead…"_

_What have I become?_ she thought, glancing towards the blood draping the walls, sheading water for what she had done. Crying, sobbing, sniffling. Old wounds reopened. Guilt, hopelessness, void, and she was alone with the walking dead in a world of carnage, filth and squalor. _What have I done?_

* * *

She lay listening to the water drip in the woods. The dark and the silence. The remnants of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. All those small fragments of the past revealing themselves only to disappear again, like a puzzle lost in the wind. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. If only her heart were stone.

In the first weeks the land was peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing, clinging to their God, to their faith, to their hope. The fittest tottering down the road, while the weak—the women and the children and the babes at the breast—were unheeded. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. No matter the strength, mankind could not adapt to this. Thus many finally lost faith and turned to creedless shells preforming bestial acts. Starvation solved by eating the dead. Cannibalism, necrophilia, and Darwin's evolutionary theory reversed and the human race mutated back to the animals they once were.

When understanding that, many had stopped clinging to their lives, many had stopped trying to run away from the necessity. They had seen their final act done, lived by their own terms. If they dared, why didn't she?

_"Sing me to sleep_

_Sing me to sleep_

_I am tired and I_

_I want to go to bed_

_Sing me to sleep_

_Sing me to sleep_

_And then leave me alone_

_Don't try to wake me in the morning_

_'Cause I will be gone_

_Don't feel bad for me_

_I want you to know_

_Deep in the cell of my heart_

_I will feel so glad to go…_"

Quinn went silent and glanced over at the red pool from the chair in which she was sitting. _Soon now_, she thought. _Soon_.

Holding the rifle tight in her hands she cursed her own lack of valour. What was she waiting for? What more could this world bring her if not more scare and agony? Society had finally moved away from its creators, they staggering after it, but never managing to reach it once again.

Acceptance.

The dead man moved—just a mere hint of a movement, but still the beginning of the end of the beginning.

Quinn lifted for her rifle, checked the chamber. One bullet left.

The dead man moved yet again. Quinn saw in the dark that it opened its eyes, now transformed into blackish and dead holes with nothing left of its former I. She had once known that man… but not anymore. Gone, he was.

The rifle felt heavy in her arms. _One more body amongst the foundations makes little difference_, she thought. She wondered what she was waiting for. _Do it_, she thought. _DO IT_.

_"Sing me to sleep_

_Sing me to sleep_

_I don't want to wake up_

_On my own anymore…"_

The dead man found his feet and raised himself from the pool of blood, staggering, seeing her… gurgling and hissing. The blackish wound of her shot in his chest. Slow and limping—like dragging his entire dead body after his one yearning—the dead man moved towards her.

Once, when she was but a girl in the flush of her youth, a young boy had given her a red flower as a token of his love. He was a rare and precious boy, and she loved him of all her heart. But he did not linger in her arms forever. He was gone now, and only the vague memory of the red flower remained. Bad things, horrible things, gloomy thing, heart-breaking things. Mankind's not to be trusted and she had learned that all too well.

As the dead man was just a yard away from her, she placed the rifle in her mouth and welcomed death. The bite of steel was red and cold.

* * *

Ancient pharaohs looked forward to the end of the world. Hoping the cadavers would rise, and reclaim hearts from golden jars. Must currently be holding breath in anticipation.


	2. Chapter 2: Never an Absolution

**Chapter 2: Never an Absolution**

"Condemned to death."

The words rang in his ears. They were never uttered aloud, never sentenced, never formed. Yet true they were, yet fitting and just. Many days he had dwelt with these words: always alone with them; every day, every hour, every minute, always frozen by their presence; always strangled beneath their weight.

His mind, once youthful and rich, had once been full of fancies, weaving—without any order or aim—inexhaustible arabesques on the poor and coarse web of life. Sometimes it was of young boys, sometimes of unbounded possessions, then of songs and of theatres full of sound and light, and then again the young boys and pleasant walks at night beneath sprawling oak trees.

But now, he was a captive. His body locked in the perpetual anarchy, while mentally imprisoned by one idea; one horrible, strangling and unconquerable idea. He had only one thought, one conviction, one certitude: condemnation to death.

Whatever he did, that frightful truth was always there.

Like a specter it stood beside him, solitary and jealous, devouring all else and shaking him with its two icy hands whenever he wanted to turn his head away or to close his eyes. When his mind wanted to shun from it, it glided into all other forms, transformed. It was like a horrible chant, with all the words addressed to him. It haunted him while awake and while in dreams, pressing him against the odious gratings of his prison as a knife.

He had just started from a troubled sleep, in which he was pursued by this thought. He made an effort to say to himself: "Oh, it was but a dream!" Even before his heavy eyes could read the fatal truth in the dreadful reality which surrounded him, a voice murmured in his ear: "Condemned to death!"

* * *

It was a sad hand that fate had dealt him.

The ground was hard, but the cold rain had softened it, so Kurt Hummel had no trouble digging the grave. He chose a spot on the eastern slope of a low hill, for Blaine had always loved to watch the sunrise. "Another day comes," he would sigh, "and who knows what it'll bring us, eh, Kurt?"

Well, one morrow had brought biters, and once they got to him he was done. By the third day he was too weak to walk. Now he was gone. Only a few days past, Blaine had been singing as they walked, Kurt thought miserably as he dug. "_You gentlemen who think you have a mission, to purge us of the seven deadly sins_," he had sung, "_should first sort out the basic food position, then start your preaching, that's where it begins_."

Now Kurt was alone without a single voice to hear.

While digging, Kurt kept on singing that song Blaine had sung. Kurt had never liked that song, though its lyrics shined of truth.

_"… You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well_

_Should learn, for once, the way the world is run_

_However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell_

_Food is the first thing, morals follow on_

_So first make sure that those who are now starving_

_Get proper helpings when we all start carving_

_What keeps mankind alive?_

_What keeps mankind alive?_

_The fact that millions are daily tortured_

_Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed_

_Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance_

_In keeping its humanity repressed_

_And for once you must try not to shriek the facts_

_Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts!"_

When the hole was deep enough, he lifted Blaine's body in his arms and carried him there. For Kurt it was hard to believe that such a fragile structure could carry such a grand person as Blaine. He laid him out in the bottom of the grave and stood over him for a time. The smell of rain was in the air again, and he knew he ought to fill the hole before the rain broke, but it was hard to fill that grave, hard to let go of the past.

His arms around him. Kurt placed the shovel in the pile of soil next to him. Laughter. Kurt lifted the shovel; saw the peak of earth on top of it. A soft kiss. The earth fell easy down into the grave, nothing restraining it, no hesitating gravity. Memories deleted, gone into void. Of earth he has come'd, and to earth he shall be.

Kurt stood staring at the grave for a long time. He knew he should say something, but no words came to his lips. No words were covering, likewise no words were worthy. He just ended on his knees, sobbing, knowing that his final hope had expired, died. All the euphemism in the world couldn't make that innocuous.

Warmth, only a byproduct of decay.

"Blaine," Kurt staggered.

It would be dark soon. The day was not hoary, yet the sun had already started its descending, starting its time of lamentation.

_Don't ever look back, don't ever look back/_

_My heart stops when you look at me/_

_Just one touch_

"Blaine," he staggered. "Please …"

* * *

Kurt Hummel passed billboards that warned people away with scrawled messages. Behind the scrawled writing he could see the pale palimpsest of advertisement, telling of goods which no longer existed. He sat down by the billboard and broke his fast with the substances one of the last tin cans in his possession.

"I'll find something to eat," he told himself. "I'll always do."

The substances tasted little, though it didn't matter no more to Kurt. Tastes were just superfluous addendums so mankind could categorise that as well. Like mankind always desired to categorize, organize and plan everything. Not that it mattered in the end, Kurt alleged. It was just the meals themselves that mattered, the energy, vitamins and minerals they brought.

A moment later he was back on the road, pushing his cart. The cart contained his life, and the knapsack on his back the vital essences, should he be forced to leave the cart in a hurry. The cart was filled with his scavenged provisions; food, equipment, clothes. Kurt wore a green parka to shun away from the wind, in the cart lay a few other garments, "fitting" for other situations. Weak hope—clinging to the past—that was, yet woe to he that is invited to a masquerade, whatever the reason, and finds himself without any fitting garments to drape himself in.

Kurt's life was built of that cart. His house formed by its metal wires, his life kept on rolling because of its wheels. Around him, all he knew—in the land beset of cadavers and ever-going cemeteries, peopled by dead hopes and memories—were what formed the contains of the cart.

It hadn't always been like that. He still remembered the days of yore before the dead peopled the streets, but that was all they were now, memories. "O Blaine," Kurt lamented. The last link to the past was lost to him. "_Oh-oh death, oh-oh death, oh-oh death, can't you spare him over 'til another year? But what is this that I can't see, with ice cold hands taking hold of me?When God is gone and the Devil takes hold, who will have mercy on his soul_?"

Pushing the cart he could barely see any signs of the late civilization but the asphalt he walked upon. The asphalt was like an animal trampling with the entire herd killed or driven afar by wolves or worse dreads. It was only Kurt and that animal trampling (in addition to that damn screeching of the cart) surrounded by a sea of trees, standing tall as mammoths. No signs of living Homo sapiens. If there ever was a God, which Kurt didn't believe, he had finally found out who his favorite was—who his masterpiece was. Summa summarum, mankind wasn't it.

However, there were few of _them_ out here. Out were the wild things are he barely encountered biters once a week, most often rarer. And then usually without contact, he just saw one; trampling over an abandoned corn field in the vast distance. Mostly it was animal life here, though they hid from him as he hid from the biters. However, in the trees he could hear the birds singing their sweet, sweet songs.

Months ago Kurt had woken in the night and overheard a flock of birds migrating in the dark. Through the window he could see it was a flock of warblers. No birds sung as sweet as warblers. _Like Blaine_, Kurt thought. Kurt had seen their wings slowly floating above the land, flying away like a dream. Kurt had wished them Godspeed. He never heard from those birds again.

"_I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known_," he started singing melancholically. "_Don't know where it goes,but it's home to me and I walk alone_."

He was walking west. There was no more surviving here, and with no reason to stay moving wasn't hard. He hoped that he once could find a place where he could settle down; fill that gap in his chest, assuming that that was still possible. Assuming it was still possible to sleep. Those horrible … "things" … insomnia, they could easily eradicate far earlier than age and the bites of the dead. Though old memories were what kept him going, little were as depressing as them.

_"I walk this empty street_

_On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams_

_When the city sleeps_

_And I'm the only one and I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone …_

_My shadow's the only one that walks beside me_

_My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating_

_Sometimes I wish someone up there will find me_

_'til then I walk alone_

_Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, aaah-ah,_

_Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah_

_I'm walking down the line_

_That divides me somewhere in my mind_

_On the border line_

_Of the edge and where I walk alone_

_Read between the lines_

_What's fucked up when everything's alright_

_Check my vital signs_

_To know I'm still alive and I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone_

_I walk alone …"_

Trudging down the asphalt surrounded by the sea of trees, nothing of interest occurring, the day soon blended into all other days and was rapidly forgotten. By nightfall he found himself a farmhouse just by the road; an old and white two-story farmhouse surrounded by plains and then forests. In the house he found a bottle of scotch from the highlands and poured himself a glass before he went to bed in the master bedroom. Kurt closed his eyes and dribbled of into sleep, and with the sleep followed the dreams.

It was once upon a midnight dreary, while Kurt pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while he nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at his chamber door. "It is some visitor," Kurt muttered, "tapping at my chamber door, only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly he remembered it was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly he wished the morrow; vainly he had sought to borrow, from my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Blaine. For the rare and radiant lover whom the angels named Blaine—nameless here and forevermore.

Presently his soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said he, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; but the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that I scarce was sure I heard you." Then Kurt opened wide the door; darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long he stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; but the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, and the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Blaine!" This he whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Blaine!" Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all his soul within him burning, soon again he heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said Kurt, "surely that is something at my window lattice; let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; it is surely the wind and nothing more!"

Open here he flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately warbler of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made it; not a minute stopped or stayed it; but, with mien of lord or lady, perched above Kurt's chamber door, perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this bird beguiling his sad fancy into smiling, by the sweet and fair decorum of the countenance it wore. "Fair and young warbler wandering from the nightly shore," Kurt said, "tell me what thy lordly name is on this night of forgotten yore."

Quote the warbler, "Nevermore."

Much Kurt marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; for he cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such name as _Nevermore_.

But the warbler, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, that one word, as if its soul in that one word it did outpour. Nothing further then it uttered—not a feather then it fluttered—until Kurt scarcely more than muttered: "Other friends have flown before—on the morrow it will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Kurt opened his eyes wide and found himself alone in the dark master bedroom of the farmhouse. No tapping did he hear, no warbler was at his window lattice. Nevertheless, for then on sleep came hard. _I've seen things, horrible things_, he thought. _How do you sleep when you have all those … things … in your head?_

Lying there in the cold bed, alone, he never slept more that night. The morn couldn't come soon enough.

* * *

Though the city was neither lavish nor of a metropolitan size, it had a mall of such a state that it could drag Milanese to shop. Too bad many of the main streets were crammed with no-brainers only caring what's underneath the clothes—and under the skin for that matter.

The day was still an infant when the forest had opened up to divulge the city. After the happily discovery of the mall, Kurt had made his way to it sneaking through shadows, backyards and alleys. He had left the cart in the fringe of the city, letting the wheels rest until he hopefully returned with some scavenged goods; foods and possibly a new outfit or two.

He entered the mall through a back door, a janitor entrance or something in that trend. Mayhaps a warehouse entrance, though he quickly stopped caring of what name the entrance bore. The halls of the mall were quiet and gaunt, dark and only light by the shimmering light of the windows. He saw none of them in the halls, most of them were naturally attracted to the streets, yet a few stragglers there always were, so as his own guardian angel he took the precaution of doing the contraceptive act of loading his pistol. The magazine contained six bullets and more were in his pockets should he need them. Kurt hoped that that wouldn't be the case; Blaine had always done most of those 'filthy deeds done dirt cheap'. Yet Kurt knew his things about weapons and could easily handle them as good as any if necessary.

For a brief moment Kurt forgot all about the mall and his mind went dribbling off and thinking of Blaine. "Blaine," he whispered. They were walking in a garden, the sun standing high, and they were both laughing …

According to procedure Kurt started by doing the boring chores: scavenge food and medication. The grocers were relatively untouched, obviously few had dared to enter (or it was none to enter), so he had no problem stacking his backpack full of merchandises. All with a hundred percept discount and without being harassed by hungry dead, though he had to admit that the customer service was a bit disappointing. Kurt wondered if he mayhaps should stay here a couple of days, rest a bit and eat well. He thought that was a good idea.

When the strenuous chores were done he went looking for a map over the mall. Second floor, he read of the mall-map. _So it was in the second floor that they had decided to build their shrine_, he figured.

Kurt took the stairs up to the second floor and manoeuvred towards the shrine—the chapel. Still the dark halls partly scavenged and in distress need of a maid, lightened by the windows. Finally, after what felt like an endless walk through the needs and urges of the late world, curiously glancing into the dark windows of the stores he passed, he reached his destination.

"Alexander McQueen" the sign above the store read.

"The gods"—the non-existent work of human imagination and surrealism used to soothe the endless pit of the meaning of life—"be good," Kurt purred solemnly.

It felt like he was standing on the top of a rainbow, watching the sun and the moon rising simultaneously, then God descending draped in a Jedi robe to offer him a million dollars. Putting that feeling into the lyrics of a song … that was how Kurt felt entering the church of fashion.

It felt good walking in there, finally seeing something beautiful. He had started fearing that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder a couple of weeks ago (to damn many shocking and dreadful stores), but now that feeling was expelled like an underage wizard who performed magic in front of Muggles.

The premises were clad all in white; floor and walls and roof, sparsely filled with matching shelves and racks and manikins, forming a feng shui in a sci-fi look reminding of the architecture of Kamino—a look that would have originated from the portfolio of the interior firm consisting of Daft Punk and Tron. And then the clothes! Kurt couldn't rub his eyes dry of the tears of joy filling them. He standing there as a colorful contrast to the pale and harmonic sci-fi premises … had Lady Gaga entered she too would have frozen and gazed like a hypnotized 'til the days when her eyes turned to dust and she was soil yet again.

After falling to his knees and preforming an endless amount of profane Ave Marias, he rose and sauntered around and let his heart and limbs be filled with the light and joy the relics among him broadcasted. Here were some of the best parts the days of yore had to offer—a little part of the old Kurt that hadn't been eradicated with the majority of mankind.

Kurt's fingers ran over the grey suit (Well, that was quite a poor description, yet no words fitting to describe its ornaments appeared to Kurt, thus the _bum-ly_ description "a grey suit."). He felt his heart skip. _Try it on_, a voice in his head whispered. _Try it on … _Once again his fingers ran over the soft fabric, felt its fresh odor fill his nostrils, and he heard the suit too whispering to him. It called to him._ Try _me, it whispered. Kurt let his own clothes fall to the floor, then removed the suit from the manikin and ascended into it.

Kurt felt reborn.

"Looking good, you sexy thing," Blaine said. "You always were one to pick the right outfits."

"Well, I have had my share of experience," Kurt chuckled, turning towards Blaine. "_Induviae est hominis confusion_."

"Come again?"

"Latin," Kurt explained. "Clothes are man's ruin."

"Well, at least someone's. All have their weaknesses. Superman has kryptonite, and—"

"—we have fashion clothes?" Kurt frowned. "That does sound quite dumb. Just imagine the climax of that film: the supervillain named 'Bad Dressed' burning down a fashion store or holding the models from the catwalk in Milan hostages."

"I do see your point, though at least the hero would have dressed properly unlike others who look neither masculine nor good. Cough, cough Spiderman."

"Aye … but don't get me started on fashion-man's superpowers."

"Yet I would actually have seen that film," Blaine pointed out.

"Yeah, me too. Really depressing once you think about it."

They both laughed. Silence followed and Kurt just stood there staring at him, no one making a move to neither speak nor act. Blaine looked just as he had looked in the old days; untouched by the harsh land, the black hair pulled backwards in an avalanche of hair wax, dressed in the black suit with red fringes from the Dalton Academy Warblers, a smile spreading from his lips and over his hazel eyes. Unfortunately, it was all too good to be true.

"So," Kurt started, mirthless. "How's—"

"—death?" Blaine looked at him, smile gone, only what seemed like a manikin left of him. "Dark. Not much to do."

_Let's go all the way tonight/_

_No regrets, just love/_

_We can dance, until we die/_

_You and I_

"Come with me," Blaine said. "Come with me," he pleaded and stretched out his hand for Kurt to grab.

_"Don't ever look back, don't ever look back_

_My heart stops when you look at me_

_Just one touch,"_

Blaine sang meekly.

Heart racing in Kurt's chest, deep into the darkness peering, long he stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. Should he stay or should he go, should he abandon all and just let go?

It was no easy hand that fate had dealt him.

"Music …" Kurt said. "Music—

_"Music, when the soft voices die,_

_Vibrates in the memory;_

_Odors, when sweet violets sicken,_

_Live within the sense they quicken._

_Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,_

_Are heaped for beloved's bed;_

_And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,_

_Love itself shall slumber on."_

A melancholia exceled in the premises, it grew like a bacterial culture and swallowed all else. Only the sad truth of Kurt's words was left.

"I love you," Blaine whispered.

"I—" Kurt said reaching for Blaine, but just before his fingers touched Blaine's skin—just before his nervous system could react and save the stimuli for the brain to comprehend—the skin melted and turned to ash, and Blaine was gone.

Gone.

Kurt sank together on the floor. He cried, sniffled. "Blaine …" he lamented, face buried in his hands. "Alone."

Later, when his eyes were empty of tears to shed, Kurt turned to his left and looked in the mirror that was placed there. Blaine was right, he agreed, it was indeed a fitting outfit, yet not for lamentation. What was it Blaine always said? "Have fashion clothes, will travel."

His hand ran over the fabric. It was a funny thing, that: while so much of the post-modern human nature collapsed and was forgotten at the end of civilization, adorning and the need of beauty was never forgotten. Experiences and old memories from the popular culture all said the same thing. Whatever followed the end, the need of beauty and urge of being "attractive" was always there. Equally, when depressed, clothes were among the things that could gladden Kurt's heart.

Perhaps the need of dressing oneself up nowadays was just a vestigiality left of the days of yore, yet it seemed to be something _so_ deep and _so_ attached to the human nature that it survived and endured all, whatever trials nature sent to dethrone it. Like a peacock shows its tale to the peahen, so did humans keep on dressing for their spouses … even when the act had lost what seemed like all its purpose, even when the spouse was forever gone. Then, perhaps—as with Kurt—the urge of adorning was among the core of vital entities, equal to eating and sleeping and warmth.

A sound from where Blaine's invisible footsteps were.

"Blaine—"

Kurt interrupted himself.

From where Blaine had stood a creature rose, staggering towards Kurt. The skin of the female creature was half rotten, gashes divulging dark-red and rotten flesh hanging here and there. From its forehead a fungoid mass grew out, like a black, dead organ. Its heavy breath, hints of gurgles and hisses, coming closer and closer.

Kurt rose. "I don't like your fashion business madam," Kurt said lethargic. "Come on. You sure you want to do this? It would be a shame to get blood all over my nice new outfit."

Unsurprisingly, it didn't answer. It just kept on staggering towards him, closer and closer, kept on sullying the Store.

Like John Wayne had done in his days, Kurt reached for his pistol, drew and aimed. And as always, a cheesy quote—preformed singing—was needed:

_"There's a brand new dance_

_But I don't know its name_

_That people from bad homes_

_Do again and again_

_It's big and it's bland_

_Full of tension and fear_

_They do it over there but we don't do it here."_

Kurt fired.

_"Fashion! Turn to the left_

_Fashion! Turn to the right_

_Oooh, fashion!_

_We are the goon squad_

_And we're coming to town_

_Beep-beep!"_

The bullet took the dead being in the forehead. It died; the corpse of the corpse collapsed onto the white stone floor and desecrated it with its repulsive presence. It was shameful to shed blood in a fashion store, yet the biter itself incited to deeds of violence.

Second stage of sorrow: anger. He was already losing himself.

Kurt dropped the pistol to the floor, and sat down looking at the corpse as if waiting for a cleaning lady to appear. At least no blood spatter had touched his suit.

_"Gurgle."_

Kurt jumped up in a heartbeat, pistol in hand. Silently he stood, listening.

_ "Gurgle," _yet again.

Then yet again, and then many more gurgles accompanied by rapid footsteps chasing down the hall and up the stairs and though the stores echoed through the building.

Kurt felt the breath rising in his chest, the sweat running down his forehead.

The darkness of the mall hissed at him.

_#facepalm_, he suddenly understood. The biters were attracted to sound, this he knew for a certainty, and someone just threw a rock in a house of glass.

One thought, one certitude: condemned to death.

And so Kurt did what his ancestors had done in millions of years, one of the vital entities of mankind; he ran.

As he exited the store "Alexander McQueen"he stopped for a brief moment, shocked from what he saw. A running mass of bodies, like a wave of death and fear, was running down the hall, towards Kurt. The hall was full of biters, all of them wanting him as a midday snack.

No halls to run, just a staircase to his right.

Kurt ran for it, planning to run down, but turned when he heard the sea of gurgles chasing up the stairs. He ran upwards the staircase, up and up and up the stairs. Biters coming closer and closer from behind and below, chasing his steps. _Why didn't I just kill the biter with a knife?_ Kurt wondered, clutching the pistol hard in his hand. He couldn't shoot them all, they were far too many … tens mayhaps over a hundred.

Up and up and up.

Tired.

Then there were no more stairs and just a door.

Kurt slammed through the door and felt the sun blinding him as he found himself on top of a roof. The sun was bright and strong out here, striking him of momentary blindness and dizziness. Slightly befuddled he turned around looking for a way of the roof.

A fire stair. He ran for it.

The door slammed open, and the first came through, mad as a rabid hound. The others followed close behind, flowing out like water and thus blocking Kurt's way to the fire stair.

Kurt lifted the pistol and placed one bullet in the first biters forehead, killing it instantly. One tried to grab his arm, but he shoved it away and blasted it into oblivion. Then the next, then another, and then yet another. Then he was empty.

The fire stairs were blocked by the wave, and a queue of hungry biters blocked the staircase from where he had come. Kurt glanced quickly for another escape off the roof. There were none.

Then, a warbler—clad in black and white—suddenly appeared above Kurt, descending from the celestial sphere like an angel. "Nevermore," it spoke melodious.

Kurt reached out his left hand for the warbler to land, so they could see each other's eyes and the warbler speak its words. "Come to me," Kurt pleaded to the warbler. And the bird answered and flew towards his hand and was just to land when—

—Kurt screamed as one biter's jaws closed around his left hand, yanking his fingers with its teeth. As it ripped of the outer joint of three of his fingers, Kurt shoved the barrel of the pistol with all of his power into the biters eye, screaming even louder. A mass of phlegm and blood splatted over Kurt as the biter went silent and collapsed.

And then the warbler was gone, flown away.

Alone.

Kurt turned hastily, his vision fuggy, biters everywhere, he could smell their breath, feel their touch, no way of the roof but the fire stairs. He ran for it, plowed through the mass of bodies, and threw himself towards the fire staircase, pushing three biters with him as an airbag … and they missed the fire stairs and lost all footing of the roof, falling—flying—every flight begins with a fall and the ground below came rushing towards them.

Kurt landed hard on the pillow of the three bodies, which splashed like a water balloon when hitting the street below. A poor airbag. Somewhere off in the distance he could hear the gurgling of biters.

_Don't ever look back, don't ever look back/_

_My heart stops when …_

Someone was kneeling over him. "Blaine?" Kurt croaked, almost choking on the blood that filled his mouth. Who else would save him, if not Blaine?

"Be still, you're hurt bad." _A woman's voice, that makes no sense_, Kurt thought.


End file.
